A Very Odd & Wicked Streak: Max McCoy on Writing the West

“I enjoy writing Westerns that make people think, which often leads them to be pissed off,” said novelist Max McCoy.

When McCoy’s novel I, Quantrill came out a couple of years ago, I wanted to write about it for my weekly newspaper column. Figuring that the column and McCoy’s book would appeal Civil War buffs, I wanted to be extra-sure to be historically accurate in my discussion of William Clarke Quantrill. To my surprise, my usually talkative sources in the Wofford College history department pretty much just said, “Quantrill was a monster.”

And that was it. The man was a monster. He led a massacre in Lawrence, KS in 1863. End of story. Not even historians (at least the ones I knew at the time) wanted to talk about him! How horrible must a man be, I wondered, for historians to avoid talking about him? And how do you write a novel about a guy so universally reviled?
Quantrill is just the sort of challenge that Max McCoy is drawn to. I, Quantrill, as the title suggests, is written from Quantrill’s point of view. McCoy does more than just make readers think. He encourages them to think like the person who led a band of guerrilla fighters in a massacre.

McCoy neither apologizes for nor glorifies Quantrill. He merely tells a story from the man’s point of view. Many readers, and fellow Kansans in particular, were, in McCoy’s words, pissed off at him for writing I, Quantrill .

McCoy is a multi-genre novelist and an investigative reporter. He’s written thrillers, such as The Moon Pool, media tie-in novels, and, of course, Westerns, such as Hellfire Canyon and Diablo Canyon.

Below, McCoy and I talk about villains, research, and making readers angry.

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From historical bad guys like Alf Bolin and William Quantrill to fictional villains, you have a way of making even the most despicable characters sympathetic… even likeable at times. Um, how do you do that?

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Max McCoy: Thanks. And I’m not really sure how I do that. Research, of course, and carefully crafting a narrative, but beyond that, I can’t tell you exactly how I do what it is that I do. I suspect there is a serious mental disorder at work.

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How do you decide on the point of view for a novel? Do you prefer first or third?

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Max McCoy: Both have their advantages. It just depends on whose story it is — with Quantrill, for example, it was obviously his story, and it was best to tell it in the first person, shooter. But third person is vastly easier, although rarely as rewarding.

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Has your approach to writing fiction changed over the years?

*Max McCoy: Yes. It was easier in the beginning because I knew less about what I was doing.

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In what ways does your training and experience as a journalist inform your fiction writing?

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Max McCoy: You’ll have to ask somebody else that. I’m too close to the work. I’d like to think it makes me a smarter and better writer, more comfortable with research and structure, but I may just be kidding myself. It might even get in the way.
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I enjoy writing westerns that make people think, which often leads them to be pissed off. Readers are sometimes angry with me for subverting the genre (and I’m not the first one to do that, but I’ve been told I do it is some unusual ways). My friend, Gary Goldstein, once said the readers like westerns because they’re set in the past and we know how that turns out, so it’s comforting. Now, Gary is a very shrewd editor, and to be a shrewd editor these days you also must make money, because if you don’t make money with your titles, you’re not going to be an editor very long. Same applies to novelists. It’s the safe thing to do — give your audience with it wants. But it’s not always the right thing to do, from an artistic and intellectual standpoint.

A novel should make demands of readers, or it’s not really a novel. So, I try to come up with some interesting characters, put them in an authentic historical context, throw something weird into the mix, and see if anything new comes of it. Of course, I’m leaving out the part where you sweat blood for six or nine months or, in the case of a couple of novels, six or nine years.

And I’ll tell you a story about making readers angry when you confound their expectations. Three or so years ago I wrote a novel called I, Quantrill, about the infamous guerrilla chieftain. Now, Quantrill has long been regarded here in Kansas as a monster, mostly because he burned Lawrence to the ground in 1863. But in addition to that, I tried to get into his head, to explore the relationship with mother, to examine his peculiar kind of moral sickness, and to tell the tale in the first person, while he was dying of a bullet wound to the spine in the spring of 1865. He was just 27.

When I signed books at the public library in Lawrence, it pissed more than a few people off. The Lawrence Journal-World, in fact, slammed the book in an editorial, criticizing me for “humaning” Quantrill and questioning why anybody should care if he had a difficult relationship with his mother. Well, I think we should care.

Also, I wasn’t offended by the editorial. After all, this was Lawrence — and, when’s the last time you can think of that a newspaper editorialized about a novel?

Oh, and I, Quantrill has been my worst-selling western, absolutely awful. It probably ended my writing career with Signet. But, I think that says more about the way most westerns are marketed. I’ve always felt my books are marketed poorly, in fact — here I am writing these books set in the west that have this very odd and very wicked streak (some of my fans describe it as western noir) and the covers look like something that was published in the fifties. Again, publishers are playing it straight, trying to provide a familiar and comforting reading experience. At least Kensington seems to be catching on a bit, because on my last couple of books they’ve used a great blurb by my friend, the bastard Johnny Boggs: “Wickedly savage.”

What is the biggest challenge in writing the West?

*Max McCoy: Making it fresh. Doing the research. Putting one damned word after another. And having literary types turn their nose up when you tell them what you’re writing. I also write thrillers and novelizations and have done four original Indiana Jones adventures for Lucasfilm, as well as a lot of investigative journalism — but westerns get me the stink eye from a lot of people who should know better.
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What can a writer who doesn’t usually read Westerns learn from reading within the genre?